manganews.net

This was interesting. The art is very nice and the storyline is different. For centuries, the kingdom has always had a male heir who runs the country and in turn, there are always female songstresses who sing at night which somehow keeps the country safe (we don’t know how this works). The story opens with Kain, brother to the songstress, and Thomas, the village chief, who are looking at a wanted poster for a young lady who they summarily meet. As it turns out, she’s the princess and the only heir to the throne, who’s come to see her songstresses. The problem is Maria, Kain’s sister has died and he’s pretending to be her because for the first time ever the songstress is actually male. Kain is trapped. His sister died, by setting up a dissonance in her song and no one can know that for the first time ever the sexual roles have been reversed, no prince and a male songstress. Kain and Thomas thinks this spells doom but the princess seems convinced things can change.

It quickly becomes obvious that this opening is part of a frame for the story. Most of the book then spends time with Maria, Thomas and Kain as youngsters. It details why Kain took off on his own, how he meets other songstresses and we learn their whole history, which is interesting. It’s clear Kain’s mom hated the village because, as it turns out, the villagers are compensated for hosting a songstress. Additionally, only a songstress can birth another songstress so they’re kept as virtual slaves by the villages to keep that royal money flowing in.

The ending completes the frame but its solutions were too passive and too naïve for me. It was a good story that ends rather weakly. I would have liked more time to have been spent on the gender switch in the roles. That had the potential to be a very powerful idea. The weirdest part was the mangaka said she wanted to make Maria a brother and didn’t and regrets that she didn’t. Of course then your whole premise would have been a totally different story….

There’s another short story in this rather thick volume, Darika, about a soldier who has to kill any Darika (a manufactured child of god) if they manage to meld with their diva (the demon part of them). It was odd but interesting. I can’t say much more than that without totally spoiling the story.

The art is simplistic but pretty. It’s very people oriented. All the detail work is on the people themselves and the backgrounds are minimalist or nonexistent. It’s an interesting style. The sound effects are left in place and translated. In spite of its problems, I found Utahime to be a very compelling story. Sadly, it’s a one-shot as I would like to drop back into this world in the future to see how things turned out.